Urbiotica Thoughts on Smart City for Parking Talks

In the latest edition of Parking Talks we discussed the topic Smart City.  We had the pleasure of talking to Marc Boher, Chief Commercial Officer, of Urbiotica who gave us valuable insight into the importance of mobility and accessibility in Smart City planning. 

What is your personal opinion on how smart city parking will evolve?

We have seen many different technological trends that are appearing and also different ways of pacing the management of parking. I think that parking is definitely going digital so we will see more and more digital services and we believe that IoT will play a role in that digital transformation by helping city managers have real-time information on how parking is behaving and based on that be able to interact and manage it in a more efficient way.

How do you feel smart city parking benefits the consumer?

I think that smart city parking is bringing a bunch of new services for the citizens going from being able to pay in a digital way to having information about where to park and where not to park. I think in the future we will see more and more sophisticated services, especially for specific users like the disabled where we will see new ways which make it easier for them to park. If they have limited mobility, being able to park close to where they want to go is a key point and we will see new solutions for them.

What new projects do you have coming up?

What we are working on now, and will be deploying soon in one of the big cities in Spain, is a service where the disabled will be able to know where the available spaces are that are reserved for them. They will be able to declare themselves when they park and when someone does not declare themselves we will be able to use automatic enforcement. With the information from sensors we will be able to know if someone without a permit has parked in the parking spot so this makes enforcement much more efficient. Today there is a lot of demand on the use of the parking spots for the general people, causing a lot of problems for them. This is one of the big issues explained to us for many years now and with some new disruptive technologies like narrowband IoT we will be able to deploy sensors without the need for deploying gateways so it will be a cost-efficient solution for the cities.

Check out the Parking Talks video in full here:

About Urbiotica

Urbiotica were established in 2008 with a very clear foundational vision: technology based on wireless sensor networks will transform how we manage our cities.

Urbiotica leads the revolution of the Internet of Things applied to Smart Cities. The projects implemented in more than 20 countries position us as the leading technology company in the development of smart solutions based on sensor systems, designed to manage urban space more efficiently and sustainably.